at all angles from his head. He slammed the phone down on the credenza and ran his hands through his hair again, making a bad situation worse. 'I swear to God, the collective IQ of all gas-station attendants drops about a hundred points on the weekend.'
'Nobody saw our cake lady?' Halloran asked from his desk. He had the phone cradled on his shoulder, and his pen was busy on the state map that was spread out on his desk.
Bonar exhaled noisily. 'Who the heck knows? Stopping at any one of those northern back-road gas stations is like jumping into a black hole. Hell, she could have stopped at every one of them, stripped naked, and danced around the pumps, and those bozos wouldn't remember.'
Halloran switched the phone to his other shoulder and rubbed his neck. They'd both been working the phones for more than two hours, trying to track the missing cake lady in the northern counties between here and the wedding in Beaver Lake, and throwing out a more casual net for Grace MacBride's car in the counties along the major routes from Minnesota to Green Bay. Halloran figured his ear would fall off soon. 'They'd remember Gretchen. That woman blocks out the sun.'
'One would think.'
'You sure you got all the stations? There's got to be a lot of them between here and there.'
'Forty-two, to be precise, and we pinned down the attendants that were on this morning for every one of them, which was no mean feat, I might add. Tracked down half of them at some bar or other in the middle of their second or third or tenth Saturday-night beer, almost too stupid to live. One kid asked if I was going to arrest him, and when I reminded him I was on the phone, calling from fifty miles away, he asked me if I wanted him to wait until I got there. You know, I don't get it. We have a drink or two on occasion, and I do believe we get more brilliant with every swallow.'
Halloran managed a smile. 'I agree absolutely. So maybe Gretchen didn't stop for gas at all.'
'No chance. Ernie said she left with under a quarter tank, and that old guzzler she drives gets about five miles a gallon max. You on hold?'
'For most of my life.'
Bonar grinned and stood up, arching his back to work the kinks out. 'So true, but who are you waiting on this time?'
'Ed Pitala.'
'Over in Missaqua?'
'Yeah, I've been trying to reach him for the past two hours. His dispatch is having some trouble patching me through.'
Bonar snorted. 'Good luck. Missaqua's serious toolies country. They've probably still got phones with cranks up there.'
'I know. Bothers me a little, though, not being able to reach Ed. He's old school, never out of touch for long, and this isn't like him.'
'I can't imagine Gretchen taking that route to Beaver Lake anyhow. The roads curlicue all over the place. Adds about thirty miles.'
'I'm just trying to cover all the bases. Maybe she cut across Missaqua County to stop at a friend's or something.'
'You are a good and thorough officer of the law. So isn't the lovely blooming Dorothy still working night dispatch there? She'll put the word out on Gretchen with or without Ed's say-so.'
'Well, that's the thing. She said she would normally, but not tonight. Got real tight-lipped when I asked why, and I got the feeling she was running pretty close to the edge, for some reason.'
Bonar stretched out his legs and scowled down at the scuffed toes of his duty boots. The northern counties were pretty relaxed about some of the rules, and if one Sheriff called in a missing person, they all usually hopped on board without looking at the clock or jumping through chain-of-command hoops. 'Maybe Ed dressed her down again for stepping on his star. That woman gives more orders in that department than he does.'
'Maybe.'
'How about all the counties Sharon might have come through? You get the word out there?'
Halloran nodded. This was a different set of counties, south of the ones Gretchen would have passed through. He'd called Sheriff Bull Rupert three counties over first, who'd laughed about him looking for women who were only a few hours late, and asked if he wanted him to stake out garage sales, which really set Halloran's teeth on edge. From then on, he'd asked everyone to pass on a callback to a Deputy Mueller he needed to reach fast, and under those circumstances, every Sheriff between Green Bay and the Minnesota border was happy to put Grace MacBride's Range Rover on the watch-and-stop list. 'No problem with those . . .'
Suddenly he ducked his mouth down to the phone again. 'Yeah, Dorothy, I'm still on, you got him? Uh . . , sure, that's fine.' He hung up the phone and shrugged. 'Ed's calling me back on his cell.'
Bonar's brows shot up. 'Ed Pitala's calling you on his own nickel?'
'It is a wonder.'
'More like a miracle. Bound to be a short conversation then. Be right back.' Bonar hitched up his pants and headed for the restroom.
He scared himself to death when he looked in the mirror, and spent over a minute wetting down his hair and combing it smooth. He still had high hopes of getting over to Marjorie's before she finally gave up on him and went to bed alone.
By the time he sauntered back into Halloran's office, Mike was sitting very still at his desk, his hands flattened on the open map, staring at the opposite wall.
'Man, I wish you wouldn't do that. I hate when you sleep with your eyes open.'
Halloran's eyes shifted to his. 'I talked to Ed.'
There was nothing ominous about the words, but the way Hallo-ran said it made the hairs on the back of Bonar's neck stand up. 'And?'
'And he said he'd called on his cell because the FBI is crawling all over them up there, and they put the lid on radio transmissions. He was real nervous telling me that much, even on his own phone.'
Bonar took a breath that strained the buttons on his brown shirt, then walked over to the desk and pulled up a chair. 'The FBI's just popping up all over the place today, isn't it?' he said quietly. 'So what are they doing up in Missaqua County?'
Halloran shook his head. 'Ed didn't know for sure, but they called all his patrols in. Not that they have that many on the road up there- you got a thousand square miles with about that many people-but they still called them in. There's one deputy on his way home; other
than that, there's not one cruiser on the road in the whole damn county, and Ed's having a real hissy fit.'
Bonar was tensing up. 'They can't do that. Can't strip a whole damn county of police protection just because they feel like it.'
'Apparently, they can, under certain circumstances. Ed tracked down the Attorney General at his lake cabin and got the word.'
'What circumstances?'
'That's the kicker. They don't have to tell during an active operation, and that's apparently what's going on. They didn't want some cruiser on patrol stumbling into the middle of it while it was ongoing, blowing the lid off.'
Bonar looked positively vapid for a minute-a very rare expression for that broad, wise face. 'That doesn't make any sense. An operation that covers the whole damn county?'
'That's exactly what I said. Ed figures they've got somebody on the roads they don't want to spook.'
Bonar leaned back in the chair and pulled a roll of breath mints out of his breast pocket.
Halloran arched a brow and glanced at his watch. 'Your optimism is amazing.'
Bonar popped a mint. 'I figure if we find Gretchen and Sharon's crew in the next five minutes, I'll still make it over to Marjorie's before she gets the night cream on.'
Halloran's cell rang from its holster, and with only a handful of likely callers, he felt a brief, foolish surge of the kind of optimism that Bonar lived with all the time. And then he heard the voice on the other end.
'Simons? What the hell are you doing calling in on my cell? What's wrong with the radio?' There was a short pause while Halloran listened. 'Hang on a second while I find the speaker on this thing. I want Bonar to hear
